The Future of Reading
Yesterday Steven Levy published on Newsweek an article about The Future of Reading based on the opinion of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO.
In the pre-dot-com-bubble, Jeff believed on a worldwide online bookstore. He brought his vision to the real world, and today we have Amazon, as he has billions of dollars in his bank account. Pretty fair. Now he believes this is the time to change to books 2.0 (or the so called e-books). From my researching, the first e-book can be traced as far back as 1946, but only in mid-90s companies tried to sell them. I remember back in 2000 everyone was talking that e-books were going to be the future along with Pocket PCs. Microsoft Reader and Adobe PDF e-books were so promising, but 7 years later I only see some e-books being shared on P2P networks by those who don’t want to pay writers.
But if someone can successfully launch e-books, it’s Bezos. Everyone buys books from Amazon and they are in position to demand e-books from publishers. But how will they make consumers change ideas? I believe they should do to books the same as Apple did with music back when they introduced the iPod. Everyone was attached to the physical format of the CDs, just like we are to books, but the advantages of the MP3 were no match for most people. Everyone now downloads musics from the Amazon of music: the iTunes Music Store and move a few to the device. The same will happen to books. Bezos has already thought on the device for reading e-books: it’s called Kindle and has being developed since 2004. Of course I don’t believe this will be the revolutionary bookreader, but a simple prototype. The real one will be much more appealing to users.
But do I real believe books will be replaced? I still have my doubts… I’m an avid reader and I do value the physical experience of reading page by page and most of all, having them on my shelves. I need to know that they are there and I do own them. But that’s me, someone who loves fantasy and sci-fi books. But as for daily feeds, and technical books I sure read them on the computer. The interactiveness and, above all, the Ctrl+F make me use my computer for my reading. But that’s me.
The average Joe doesn’t read so much (in Portugal almost nobody reads, but I know it’s not that bad everywhere else) and the e-book will be a nice way of improve those statistics. When I went to Barcelona, one thing that amazed me was the book vending machine! A lot of people read books in the metro in the everyday commuting to work. For those people, the e-book with a Amazon online bookstore was a pretty nice innovation. And they could just go to the nearest Starbucks and download a new romance, just like you could download a music.
The crucial factor will be price. E-books will be a lot cheaper than physical books of course, and this will make young people pick the electronic version rather than the traditional one. And they are who will decide the future technologies. Of course the real lovers would still want to buy books, and there will be always those available (maybe more expensive?!) just like you can still go the a FNAC store and buy a few CDs.
lmjabreu
Humm, I don't agree with that "just like" part. And I'm not sure sure if there's actually any kind of attachment to the CD media, Vinyl of course, but CD, really don't think so.
"I do value the physical experience of reading page by page"
Bingo, the CD didn' play a part in the music experience of the user, he just inserted it and pressed play, he surely didn't watch it spin while listening to the music(some people do, but not everyone), in books, the media plays a relevant role in the experience, symbolically, and physically.
"The crucial factor will be price."
The crucial factor will be the feel, the device itself, imo. No matter how cheap it is, I won't use anything similar to that prototype.
My ideal ebook reader would have a touchscreen covering 90% of its surface, in the lack of a proper tactile feedback technology I'd want a surface that felt and looked like paper, a natural interface is a must, to flip a page I slide my finger on one of the corners(gimme audio & visual feedback too), size will matter a lot, maybe 8" screen, not sure, as for power, I've seen somewhere a highly efficient solar panel, like 2 square cm of it would have the same output as a classic 2 square meter panel, use that please on the remaining 10% surface and on the entire back of the device, so that when I flip it over it turns itself off and starts charging. The books themselves, guess what, Google's our friend, and my device'll connect to their 700Mhz cell network(lol, it'll run Data OS too), WiMax, you name it, as long as it isn't an hotSPOT, and download them directly from some store, authentication is done by fingerprint(they're really small y'know, throw one at those 10%) or read my NanoID(a unique pattern of nano radios in my bloodstream XD ), guess that's all but you get the idea.
"And they could just go to the nearest Starbucks and download a new romance, just like you could download a music."
As I said, I don't want to be lured to a Starbucks by a book-bait, unless it's free. But yeah, that's a nice idea.
Oh, I hope the marketing people don't forget to advertise that ebook reader as something you can use to save the earth.(tho it'd be 'true')
Oh, btw, data input's made by handwriting anywhere on the screen.
Now, back to 2k7, here's a nice commercial ebook reader, the Sony Reader
They even included a cover, nice touch, I suggest having the cover of the last open book to be displayed on it, so when you close the reader you get the same feeling of when you place the book on a table, if you know what I mean, "it's there, and it's more than digital".
Forgot one thing, we want color in our graphic novels.